SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories from the Lotus Sutra

Dogen-Zenji so cherished the Lotus Sutra that he actually carved a selection of it into his door. This, the core text of not only Zen but the whole of Mahayana Buddhism, has never lost its appeal among practitioners of the Way. Join us for our SPRING PRACTICE PERIOD: Stories From the Lotus Sutra led by Sensei Joshin Byrnes, Sensei Genzan Quennell

An Ethics of Care (Part 6 of 15)

TO LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST please enter or confirm your email address below:

To listen to the free dharma talks on this site, we'd like to invite you to our mailing list.
After entering your email, this page will reload, and you will have instant and unlimited access to the hundreds of dharma podcasts on this site.

Episode Description: Stephen Batchelor begins the morning talk with a discussion of the nature of ethics. For the Ancient Greeks, ethics did not refer merely to systems for making moral judgments, but rather encompassed “the practice of philosophy.” Stephen says, “The practice of philosophy was the care of the soul. It was an art of living.” Stephen distinguishes legalistic, or rule-based, ethics from situational ethics, which avoids generalization and recognizes each situation as unique and unprecedented. He characterizes both Buddhist and Christian ethics as situational and as a break from the legalistic ethical traditions of the past. He then discusses the philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, both of whom were concerned with how certain ways of seeing the world cause us to fall out of touch with our immediate experience.

To help keep these podcasts freely available, we hope you will consider making a suggested donation of $25 to ourDharma Podcast Fund.

STEPHEN BATCHELOR is a contemporary Buddhist teacher and writer, best known for his secular or agnostic approach to Buddhism. Stephen considers Buddhism to be a constantly evolving culture of awakening rather than a religious system based on immutable dogmas and beliefs. In particular, he regards the doctrines of karma and rebirth to be features of ancient Indian civilisation and not intrinsic to what the Buddha taught. Buddhism has survived for the past 2,500 years because of its capacity to reinvent itself in accord with the needs of the different Asian societies with which it has creatively interacted throughout its history. As Buddhism encounters modernity, it enters a vital new phase of its development. Through his writings, translations and teaching, Stephen engages in a critical exploration of Buddhism's role in the modern world, which has earned him both condemnation as a heretic and praise as a reformer.

One Response to An Ethics of Care (Part 6 of 15)

Incredible talk. Thank you. You have put caring in an historical and modern context and brought caring into our human experience. Also, I am grateful that your elaborating on traditions which base action on a legal perspective and those which are based in care. I read Gilligans book, in a Different Voice many years ago and it changed my attitude toward my own great amvialence toward male dominance of the hierarchy of ethics. It conferred a new way of seeing myself and the world around me. You talk enlarged upon this and again affirms my own convictions and experience. It is difficult to live in a constant awareness that we are all fallible human beings but is certainly worth trying.